The printing press, long before the bit
Showed how Guttenberg’s brainwave…
And Caxton’s newfound power of voice
Formed a new language, for a new age
The great vowel shift, was in full flux
Which helped craft such bad spellings
Scared the h into ghosts and ghouls, these fools…
Just to keep existing patterns propelling
Democratising knowledge with books
But only using the chancery standard
The King’s English in print, gave more than a hint
That they would soon, kill off most of our language
A snapshot of one man’s lexicon, on one day
And how well-crafted words, can be wiped…
With a fresh typeface, in an upper-case
Unphased by clichés, and stereotypes
Till this ordered, standardised, system of typecast
Slowly, but surely, completely… collapsed
Then, since 1928, the commandments of detective fiction state…
You can’t have Chinamen in your tale, just in case they’re great
Nor any Eastern sage or mystic, with clues about the plot
But they don’t recite, you can’t gain insight, from AI chatbots